Is the World really getting worse? (page 3)

Snoozy

Worlds getting better, sadly the people on it are getting worse...

Snoozy

Nickolas

Worlds getting better, sadly the people on it are getting worse...

That seems to be a contradiction, snoozy.

ProdigalSon

Too bad we can't go back and ask people in the middle ages if today's world is worse than theirs. Let's see... Inquisitions, average lifespans around 35 years... Barbarians....

....or lets go back to the days of the early Roman Empire.... with 90 percent of the world illiterate...

or maybe lets go back just a hundred years... the whole world engulfed in war, bubonic plague killing millions....

This is why there have ALWAYS been doomsday cults....

Lets Think

I beleive the world is a much better place now. Note portions of some of past posts on this:

This all lead me down another road of “personal” study. What about the worsening world conditions does that not prove we are in the time of the end? I went to a two day elder’s school they had a demo how to deal with someone who doubted the time of the end. We were to ask them are things getting better or worse as you look around the world. They of course say worse, and then Joe Elder say’s see we are at the end of the last days. All simple and clear cut. I had just been NYC and walked through central park at night, never felt safer. Murder rate in NYC in the late 70’s and 80’s was 1500 a year now 500 a year. Getting better? Violent crime way down! I went to the lower east side Tenement museum in NYC. (Well worth it by the way) Conditions for the average person in the 1800 really really sucked, infant mortality terrible, I could go on and on. We are taught the WW1 ushered a time of death and violence. That we are living in the wickedest and most turbulent time in world history. This is absolutely untrue. The only way you could think that we are living in the worst time in human history is if you had little or no knowledge of history. Interesting that there were deadlier wars then WW1 in the 1800’s Wikipedia say 15 million died in WW1 but in the supposed peaceful 1800’s 20 million died in the Taiping Rebellion. (Or do we just count European wars) More Americans died in the civil war then every war put together since the civil war. If you still have doubts about this, here is some recommended reading.

It's getting better all the time : 100 greatest trends of the last 100 years. by

Stephen Moore , Julian Lincoln Simon

The new Bill Bryson book “At Home” What life was like for the average person 1800’s.

“Before the Dawn” By Nicholas Wade

Maybe you think the Morals are in big decline please read.

The Way we never Were. By Stephanie Coontz.

I think you get the point of how I feel.

FlyingHighNow

Human beings have always been capable of great humanity and inhumanity and harm to the environment. Now we have the cumulative knowledge of the ages to aid us in being either beneficial or evil and destructive. Man just gets more sophisticated in his methods.

It doesn't take a prophet to understand that technology can be used for great evil.

JeffT

My grandfather was a country doctor back in the thirties when the first antibiotics came out. Dad says his dad was astounded because people stopped dieing from pneumonia.

I can remember being told that no one was ever going to see a bald eagle in the lower 48. They are now a common sight in Western Washington.

A few things that have become common place since 1914 (at least in the Western World and lots of other places are catching up):

refrigeration

vacuum cleaners

pain free dentistry

metropolitan sewage treatment plants

inexpensive travel by all kinds of methods(I read somewhere that until about 1950 most Americans who were not involved in a war died within forty miles of the place they were born)

rural electricity

hot water heaters

vitamins

disposable syringes and needles (one of jobs in my dad's lab was hand sharpening hyrpdermic needles - a talent that is thankfully no longer needed)

I'm sure the list goes on

FlyingHighNow

Jeff T, there are trade offs for sure. Some things are better for us, some are worse. I think the big diff now is that human beings really can render the earth uninhabitable. With nuclear weapons or modern day pollution, we could soon find ourselves living in a Mad Max world or extinct. The Bible is not the only book or collection of prophets to predict the end of this world.

simon17

Quote from the great Jeff Tweedy of Wilco (forget the song though)

"Every generation believes its the worst;

Believes it's the end of the world..."

Pretty true if you ask me.

JeffT

Of course all kinds of $hit can happen. But the point here is the Watchtower's relentless harping that EVERYTHING is worse. A few hundred years ago a now treatable disease killed a third of the population of Europe. By comparison the highest death toll in WWII was 16% of the population of Poland. All other countries were lower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

carla

always a good topic, nothing to add really just want to remember to print out Outlaw's pic!

Is the World really getting worse?

Share this